All about the ancient tribes
While American Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November every year, in Canada they celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. This is because the Canadian Thanksgiving is closely linked to the harvest festival we are more familiar with in the UK.
Thanksgiving (French: Action de grâce), or Thanksgiving Day (French: Jour de l’Action de grâce) is an annual Canadian holiday, held on the second Monday in October, which celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year.
Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. And since Thanksgiving for Canadians is more about giving thanks for the harvest season than the arrival of pilgrims, it makes sense to celebrate the holiday in October.
Canadian Thanksgiving is in October—and on a Monday That’s right! Canadian Thanksgiving happens a full month and a half before American Thanksgiving, on the second Monday in October (Monday, October 12, in 2020).
The first Thanksgiving after Confederation was observed on 5 April 1872. A national civic holiday rather than a religious one, it was held to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from an illness. Thanksgiving was first observed as an annual event in Canada on 6 November 1879.
It’s not observed nationwide It’s an official statutory holiday throughout Canada except in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Employers aren’t required to pay their employees for the day off, so families often celebrate it the day before.
John M. But there is no indication that turkey was served. For meat, the Wampanoag brought deer, and the Pilgrims provided wild “fowl.” Strictly speaking, that “fowl” could have been turkeys, which were native to the area, but historians think it was probably ducks or geese.
To give thanks to God is a Christian directive. Thanksgiving is definitely a religious holiday rooted in the Christian tradition of our country. The settlement’s charter required that the day of arrival be commemorated with thanksgiving to Almighty God.
Post it on the Canadian holiday forum. Statutory Holidays in Canada.
Holiday | Day Observed | Observance |
---|---|---|
Civic Holiday | First Monday in August | AB, BC, SK, ON, NB, NU |
Labour Day | First Monday of September | Nationwide |
Thanksgiving | Second Monday in October | Nationwide except NB, NS, PE, NL |
Remembrance Day | November 11 | Nationwide except ON, QC, NS, NL |
Turkey is usually eaten for Thanksgiving in Canada, though some choose to eat ham, chicken, or other proteins. The turkey is usually accompanied by stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn, gravy, and fall veggies like squash. The standard dessert is pumpkin pie.
Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people.
Many of the trappings of Canadian Thanksgiving are similar to those of its U.S. counterpart, but the Canadian tradition belongs to the16th century, more than four decades before the historic 1621 gathering in Plymouth, Massachusetts that set American Thanksgiving into motion.
‘ Happy Thanksgiving ‘ in other languages: – French-speaking people in North America might wish one another ‘Bonne Action de grâce’ or ‘Joyeux Thanksgiving ‘. The Canadian French version of Thanksgiving Day is ‘Jour de l’Action de grâce’, and in France it is known as ‘le Jour de Merci Donnant’.
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan.
The traditional Thanksgiving meal is dinner on Thursday in the U.S. whereas in Canada the feast could be held either on Sunday or Monday.